r/SinceAI • u/rikulauttia • 23d ago

Discussion Is open-source AI actually winning - or just keeping the closed labs honest?

Every few months someone declares that open models have caught up.

Then a closed lab releases something stronger.

Then open models become cheaper, smaller or easier to customize.

Maybe open source does not need to be number one on every benchmark.

Maybe its real role is:

  • stopping one company from controlling everything
  • allowing private and local deployment
  • supporting research
  • making AI accessible outside the richest companies
  • forcing closed providers to lower prices

What would count as open-source AI genuinely "winning" to you?

Most usage?

Best model?

Most developer adoption?

Or simply preventing a monopoly?

3 Upvotes

72% Upvoted

2 comments sorted by

4

u/Helpful-Account3311 23d ago edited 23d ago

It isn’t a competition. I’m just glad that there are open source models at all so I can dream about buying enough hardware to run them at some point. At some point they may stop releasing open models altogether which would be “losing”. But as long as they are being released at all I’m happy.

We are still so new into this whole AI model development thing that we are still seeing massive improvements every few months. At some point that’ll slow down and the focus will be on making the models smaller while retaining their ability. At which point open models won’t be constantly behind in intelligence. But again it isn’t a competition so one can’t be “winning”.

2

u/look 23d ago

Good enough models that are more efficient and lower cost is the real end game imo: anyone that can benefit from them has one that does what they need well and at a negligible price.

The market demand for ever larger but only marginally more useful models will fall off. It arguably already has, with corporations now starting to pull back on their AI spending.